Jun 09 2023

Day Off

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I’m utterly exhausted. I need some time away from this monstrosity. Anyway, this morning there’s only one story that really matters, and there are plenty of able commentators to address it. So be well, and check back tomorrow.

Jun 08 2023

Something You Might Not Have Realized

     As the official school year dribbles out to its close, school-age kids are celebrating in anticipation of their summer vacations. What will they do with their time off? Well, when I was in that age band, I was sent to spend the summer on my wealthy aunt’s country estate in Dutchess County, where I functioned as unpaid manual labor. I hope today’s school-age kids do better.

     But the approach of the summer vacation period is of less moment than the termination of the current phase of the “twelve-year sentence.” Most parents, sad to say, never ponder the ten-month removal of their children from their lives: what good it does them; whether it’s truly necessary to prepare their kids for adulthood; and why on Earth the “public schools” have embraced so much that is lunatic and openly destructive. John Dewey, one of the early luminaries of “public education” – two words, two lies – once made it quite explicit:

     Didn’t know that, did you, Gentle Reader? This supposed “educator,” through whose classes the great majority of teachers-to-be passed for several decades, was rabidly anti-individualist, anti-Christian, and anti-family. His vision of the schools was to function as antagonist to those things, along with whatever actual knowledge might be conveyed to its inmates for form’s sake. Viewed in that light, the determination of the “progressives” to control the schools absolutely is easily understood.

     A more recent writer of more wholesome values and convictions put the following into the mouth of a “progressive” baron in his first novel:

     “We’re going to tie together all the states and their educational systems to a single set of curricular standards, and we’ll require homeschooled students meet the same standards. We’re going to mandate testing to exactly quantify student performance to be sure no child gets left behind and identify problem schools and problem teachers.”
     I was confused. “That sounds like a good thing,” I noted. “Quantify performance and hold public schools accountable for their failures.”
     Uncle Larry smiled smugly. “Oh, it is, but you should never consider a policy based only on its first-order effects. You have to look past that at the second-order consequences, too. Teachers will be evaluated on their performance based on how well their students do on their tests. So, what will happen?”
     “They will be motivated to do their best to do a good job teaching their students.” It still wasn’t making sense to me.
     “They will spend all their time teaching students how to optimize test scores to the exclusion of anything outside the officially approved curriculum, making sure they stay precisely focused on the officially sanctioned lessons,” Uncle Larry clarified. “But, that’s not the real benefit.”
     “I still don’t get it,” I confessed. “What happens when they run out of time? When they are already teaching their poor little hearts out, and their students’ test scores are still questionable, and the raise they were hoping for isn’t going to happen unless their students become more proficient?” I was still drawing a blank.
     Uncle Larry enlightened me. “They are going to assign homework to their students: enough homework to guarantee that even elementary school students are spending all their spare time doing homework. Their poor parents, eager to see that Junior stays up with the rest of the class, will be spending all their time helping their kids get incrementally more proficient on the tests we have designed. They’ll be too busy doing homework to pick up on any anti-social messages at home.”
     “Homework in elementary school?” The notion seemed ridiculous to me. Except for the occasional project, I didn’t even begin to get homework until I was in ninth grade or so. Even now, in high school, I was usually able to complete all my homework in spare moments while in other classes or during breaks.
     “Of course it seems peculiar to you,” Uncle Larry acknowledged. “You’re not accustomed to it, but it’s coming: slowly, gradually, bit by bit, until parents and children alike are used to the concept and take it for granted.”
     That sounded spooky. It reminded me of Dad’s parable of the frogs in the slowly boiling water. I carefully kept my unease off my face and focused on looking interested and engaged.
     “Children will be too busy to learn independence at home,” Uncle Larry continued, “too busy to do chores, to learn how to take care of themselves, to be responsible for their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Their parents will have to cater to their little darlings’ every need, and their little darlings will be utterly dependent on their parents. When the kids grow up, they will be used to having someone else take care of them. They will shift that spirit of dependence from their parents, to their university professors, and ultimately to their government. The next generation will be psychologically prepared to accept a government that would be intrusive even by today’s relaxed standards – a government that will tell them exactly how to behave and what to think. Not a Big Brother government, but a Mommy-State….”
     “Eventually, we may even outlaw homeschooling as antisocial, like our more progressive cousins in Germany already do,” he noted. “Everyone must know their place in society and work together for social good, not private profit.”

     How much of that rings true to you, Gentle Reader? Measure it, however you please, against what your kids are actually being “taught” ten months per year, and the degree to which their schooling separates them from your tutelage and influence. Does schooling as it’s practiced today seem more in line with true, practical education or with the goals expressed in the snippet above?

     There’s little point in beating this into the magma layer. Either you get it or you don’t. The pernicious nature of government-run schooling is already on open display as the “progressives” force ever more madness into the “curricula.” Left-wing activists of every kind have free access to the schoolroom. Kids are being pilloried for daring to assert that there are only two sexes. God help those that fail to “volunteer” for the latest protest march, or that come to school wearing a “Make America Great Again” T-shirt or cap. And of course “educators’ unions” in all fifty states are doing their damnedest to make it impossible for even the best-educated parents to homeschool their kids.

     Get them out now, before you lose them forever.

     (Applause to our newest Co-Conspirator for the Dewey graphic.)

Jun 08 2023

Let me tell you about James

James was born the eldest of nine kids in a Irish Catholic family. James’ dad was in the Navy, and James just happened to be born in 1940, so his dad was gone quite a bit of the time trying to teach bad people the consequences of their actions. James excelled at running, winning countless meets as a high schooler, and then holding state records in the one-mile an two-mile events when he attended college. When there’s nine kids in the family and your mom calls out “DINNER TIME!” you make sure you’re the first one to the table, because that’s a situation of “The Quick and The Hungry”.

After college, James decided that he wanted a vacation, so he joined Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. Since being an officer in the USMC wasn’t hard enough, he took up running marathons as a hobby. That lasted until knee surgery in his 60’s. After that he took up bike riding and competed in several races, because those damn kids needed to be put in their place.

At one point while he was stationed in Norfolk, VA, he injured his ankle. This is important because while swimming in a pool as part of his recovery, he was hit on by a female life guard who thought he looked cute. They got married about three years later. They had two boys, much to his great surprise. James once told me that if he had known that sex led to kids, he would have just joined the priesthood and remained celibate. I believed him when he said this.

James did two tours in Viet Nam. It was not a fun time. That’s all that needs to be said about that.

After twenty two years of service, James figured it was time to be called “Mister”, so he retired and went back to school. He worked in the computer industry in a time when MS DOS was the king of operating systems. Along the way he did his best to instill honor, work ethics and integrity into his two boys. It stuck. One went on to join the service, and the other ended up becoming the President of the company that he had started working for decades ago just to pay a few bills.

James was diagnosed with cancer around 2014. He informed his family of this by titling his email “Well, damn”. He successfully fought it off twice. But when the Covidiacy made the medical establishment lose its collective mind, things got a little out of hand, and cancer started winning. James’ two boys spent countless hours at the family home making sure that James and his wife were taken care of, and that James would be able to live life as he wanted to live it. He spent the last part of his life on his property, looking out at the forest that he loved and surrounded by family that he loved and who loved him. Have you heard the joke “An Introvert is someone who, when a pandemic happens, doesn’t notice a change in their lifestyle”? That was James. All he needed was his wife, his sons, and a couple of his Marine Corps League buddies.

James lost his battle with cancer today. He died with his wife of over fifty years by his side, and his younger son praying the rosary at his bedside every morning.

He taught me how to drive. How to run a chainsaw and fell a tree. He taught me the joy in laughing. Jokes and practical jokes and how poking fun at a problem makes the problem easier to deal with. He taught me that freedom and responsibility are both sides of the same coin. He hammered a work ethic into me. When I first enlisted, he was the officer who swore me in. That picture remains in the dining room to this day, because that’s how proud of me he was. He raised me and mentored me and guided me, and as his health failed I did everything I could to return what he did for me in service to him, to make sure he didn’t ever get put into a nursing home.

He was a prickly perfectionist. When I was a teen I got t-boned by a driver who had ran a red light. He got pissed off at me for not looking both ways a fourth or fifth time. I can say that a lot of my unhealthy mental habits come from him. The perfectionism. Taking the blame for things because if somehow, somewhere if I had done some thing that I wasn’t aware of I could have made X or Y happen.

But he built the parts of me that are the best. The integrity. The ability to stand my ground when I’m right, and to acknowledge my mistakes when I’m wrong. The ability to just get the job done, because dammit that’s what a proper man does.

I’m going to miss him. And maybe if I live a good enough life, I’ll get to see him again.

Jun 07 2023

Worse Than Communism

     They said “It can’t happen here.” They said “This is America, where we have rights.” And they said “He wouldn’t dare!” But he has:

     Scared yet?

     How would you, Gentle Reader, defend your privacy and property against a ukase such as that of New York City Mayor Eric Adams? Adams will have police power at his disposal. He might also have elements of the New York National Guard, if he can secure the cooperation of his fellow traveler Kathy Hochul in Albany. And there’s always the possibility that the Biden Administration, which purely loves illegal aliens, might lend a hand. Are you prepared to stand them all off?

     When the Communists did this in the early (“Dr. Zhivago”) years of the Soviet Union, at least the “beneficiaries” were Russian citizens.

     Retired SEAL Matt Bracken has made a dark prediction:

     This is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

     Get out of the cities, Gentle Readers. The danger is real.

Jun 07 2023

Call The CSI Macro!

     What’s that, Gentle Reader? You don’t remember that one? Oh, it’s simple. Just four little words:

“People lie; evidence doesn’t.”

     I should add, for completeness, that “people” also:

  • Are frequently mistaken;
  • Can be deceived about what they saw or heard;
  • Come with agendas and priorities of their own;
  • Can be “bought.”

     The logician in me strives to keep all that in mind when listening to dramatic claims from persons in the media, no matter who they are. This is exceptionally important today, as Tucker Carlson has just dropped his first Twitter production.

     Tucker has become a trusted figure for many of us in the Right. That’s not inherently a bad thing; we need such figures, if only to reassure us that we’re not necessarily crazy. But we must take care not to trust them to excess.

     Tucker’s video includes several assertions for which I, at least, require quite a lot of evidence before I’ll accept them as even provisionally true. Two stand out for me, specifically because he labeled them true with what appears complete confidence:

  • Ukrainian forces blew up Russia’s NordStream pipelines.
  • The Air Force has the wreck of an alien – i.e., nonhuman – aircraft.

     At this time, the general public has been shown no evidence to support either contention. Yes, we have testimony, but that’s not the same thing. That’s one of the reasons the phrase “as unreliable as an eyewitness” is a staple of lawyers everywhere.

     Certain tenets for the evaluation of a positive claim should be universally known and observed…but aren’t:

  1. There’s a difference between evidence and testimony.
  2. Sensational assertions require substantial evidence.
  3. It’s possible to put too much trust in a trusted figure.
  4. It’s seldom possible to prove a negative beyond a reasonable doubt.
  5. Beware the Kafka-trap! (e.g., “If you dispute my claim that the Air Force is hiding a crashed alien ship, you’re part of the conspiracy to conceal it!”)

     Apparently David Charles Grusch, the gentleman who made the “alien craft” claim, has an impeccable reputation. He’s a combat veteran and was in the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force operated by the Office of Naval Intelligence for some time. A colleague, Karl Nell, has called his claim “fundamentally correct.” But that’s testimony, and it could be false for one or more of the reasons given here.

     Considering the stupendous, overwhelming implications of the claim, I’m reserving judgment. In part, it’s because no physical evidence has yet emerged to support Grusch’s assertions. In still larger part, it’s because I want to believe it — and there’s nothing more likely to lead one astray than the desire to believe.

     Today, with so much obvious garbage in every kind of communications medium, the duty of hardheaded skepticism is more imperative than ever. There are all manner of persons and institutions, each with an agenda, trying to persuade us of this or that. Oftentimes, they persist in their claims even after massive evidence against those claims has emerged. The difficulty of proving a negative – i.e., “That never happened” – is part of the reason for their longevity; another part is that there’s nearly always someone eager to believe them.

     Wishful thinking can extend to the embrace of unusual, even outlandish claims. There are still people claiming, for their various reasons, that the atrocities of September 11, 2001 did not happen – that it was history’s biggest “deepfake.” Others claim that “It was the Israelis.” Still others allege that the Towers were deliberately demolished by planted explosives, rather than collisions with airliners. Disproving any of those claims is beyond human power. However, their implausibility inclines me to believe that what I saw with my own eyes that day really happened, and that it was the work of nineteen Islamic fanatics.

     Of course, I can’t prove that beyond the shadow of a doubt, either. It’s the world we live in.

     “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it – no matter if I have said it! – except it agree with your own reason and your own common sense.” — Buddha

Jun 06 2023

This Marks the Death of Europe

From the start of the Industrial Revolution, one characteristic of the German people has remained constant. They take pride in doing their jobs well, with meticulous attention to detail, and making sure that the work is done correctly. German craftsmanship has been a dependable feature of the German state.

True, the part of Germany that was separated during the years of Russian rule deteriorated from this ideal. It was one of the factors that made reunification so challenging.

But, nothing has been so damaging to this work ethic as the invasion by non-Germans. Read the sad story here.

Jun 06 2023

Evidence, Interrupted

     Yes, friends, you guessed it: Christopher Wray has refused to surrender the “Biden bribery” FD-1023 after all:

     Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is afraid its informant who provided information about an alleged bribery scheme by the Biden family will be killed if their identity is exposed.
     The alleged $5 million bribery scheme occurred while Joe Biden was serving as Barack Obama’s vice president.
     “Just left meeting for House Oversight. The FBI is afraid their informant will be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family,” Luna tweeted on Monday.

     Of course, the two critical questions:

  • “Why?”
  • “By whose order would he be killed?”

     …have not been answered. I’m not sure they were asked. But I can easily imagine an exchange such as the following:

Rep. Comer: Why would he be killed? The accusation is now in the open. It wouldn’t vanish with his death.
Director Wray: Well, you see, this is a highly valued informant who’s provided us with a lot of other information vital to national security.
Rep. Comer: Such as?
Director Wray: Oh, I can’t tell you that! It would compromise one of our most prized sources!

     And following that exercise in futility, we would have this:

Rep. Comer: Well, could you tell us who would have the most to gain from killing him?
Director Wray: Sorry, I can’t do that.
Rep. Comer: Why not?
Director Wray: It would expose one of our methods for gathering national-security intelligence!

     I’ve ranted about this “national security” business before. It’s a canard, a con job. The circularity of it gives it away at once:

  • Considerations of national security override all other obligations of the intelligence community.
  • Only persons deemed utterly reliable are permitted access to national-security information.
  • The intelligence community decides what is and is not vital national-security information
  • The intelligence community decides who is and is not sufficiently reliable to view it.
  • Disclosing our criteria for making those decisions would compromise national security.

     There’s no way off that carousel. (Compare this to “compelling government interest,” another circularly-defended canard.)

Jun 06 2023

An Irrational Exclusion

     The original Constitution included a couple of things that should have been left out…but today, I have in mind a provision that should have been put in:

     Three Christian organizations will host a prayer vigil on the west steps of the California state Capitol in Sacramento on Monday as a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is honored inside by elected officials.
     The California Family Council (CFC), the American Council, and the California Catholic Conference are hosting the vigil in response to Sen. Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) decision to recognize “Sister Roma,” a member of the drag performers accused of mocking Christianity and Catholicism, on the Senate floor.
     “It’s disheartening to see the California Legislature honor a group characterized by its mockery of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular,” CFC President Jonathan Keller remarked in a press release. “By promoting the profane ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,’ these elected leaders are endorsing mockery, hatred, and blasphemy. This ceremony is deeply offensive towards millions of Californians across the Golden State.”

     It was meant to offend Christians, especially Catholics. Didn’t Maximum Leader Newsom declare California a “sanctuary state” for abortions? Didn’t he invite the whole Third World to take up residence in California at citizen taxpayers’ expense? Didn’t he forbid state and local law enforcement to report illegal aliens to the federal authorities? Once you’ve taken stands like that, your intentions are beyond any possible concealment.

     But what was the missing Constitutional provision, you ask? I’ll phrase it as an Amendment:

     The Senate of the United States shall have the sole power to expel from the Union any state which, by a two-thirds concurrence of the whole body of Senators, is found to have become irredeemably evil, or to have gone barking mad, or both.

     Don’t you think that would make a fine addition to our Supreme Law, Gentle Reader?

Jun 06 2023

“I Must Lose Myself in Action…

…lest I wither in despair” Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tennyson had a difficult and mostly unhappy life. It was only after being informed by doctors that his recurrent trances were no epilepsy, but an ‘aura’ that preceded attacks of gout, that he was able to marry and have children. (Epilepsy and mental illnesses ran throughout his family).

I’m a product of an old-fashioned education, who was exposed to Tennyson, Shakespeare, and other Dead White Men. And, I’m very grateful for that opportunity.

Back in the day (a phrase repeated by many of the elders of the Black communities my students lived in), teachers regularly assigned poetry that was considered to be important to the cultural history:

  • The Charge of the Light Brigade
  • The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
  • Shakespeare’s Sonnets
  • American poets – Emma Lazarus, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and others

We were expected to memorize lines of poetry, and be able to recite them aloud.

As a result, lines will rise up from those long-buried memories, making a connection between current events and lessons from the past.

What poetry will our grandchildren remember?

Yo, B—-, S— dis N—– C—!

What we allow to fill our children’s heads will determine their future. THAT is a major reason why I continue writing and fighting to wrest America from its headline rush into savagery.

Most of us do not live in monasteries, nor in isolated cabins. We are right in the thick of a culture that is rapidly, and deliberately, being destroyed. Perhaps we should create USBs that can be preloaded with the electronic equivalent of graded readers. Age-appropriate literature, poetry, and essays, both for cultural knowledge, and moral and civic instruction. Pass them on to families needing alternatives to Woke literature.

What books or works would you recommend (and, identify the age level that you think appropriate – Early childhood, 8-12, 13-15, 16+)? Put the lists in the comments, I will start a recommended group of lists, and, eventually, set up a downloadable set of zip files.

Jun 06 2023

The Imperative Question

     Toward the end of Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden has a final meeting with the “looter elite” in which they propose a “Steel Unification Plan.” That “plan” is plainly just as vampiric as every other that emerged from the looter-ruled economy described in the novel. Yet the elite are solidly behind it…which causes Rearden to ask them – and himself – the question:

     “Well, let me see,” said Rearden. “Orren Boyle’s Associated Steel owns 60 open-hearth furnaces, one-third of them standing idle and the rest producing an average of 300 tons of steel per furnace per day. I own 20 open-hearth furnaces, working at capacity, producing 750 tons of Rearden Metal per furnace per day. So we own 80 ‘pooled’ furnaces with a ‘pooled’ output of 27,000 tons, which makes an average of 337.5 tons per furnace. Each day of the year, I producing 15,000 tons, will be paid for 6,750 tons. Boyle, producing 12,000 tons, will be paid for 20,250 tons. Never mind the other members of the pool, they won’t change the scale, except to bring the average still lower, most of them doing worse than Boyle, none of them producing as much as I. Now how long do you expect me to last under your Plan?”
     There was no answer, then Lawson cried suddenly, blindly, righteously, “In time of national peril, it is your duty to serve, suffer and work for the salvation of the country!”
     “I don’t see why pumping my earnings into Orren Boyle’s pocket is going to save the country.”
     “You have to make certain sacrifices to the public welfare!”
     “I don’t see why Orren Boyle is more ‘the public’ than I am.”
     “Oh, it’s not a question of Mr. Boyle at all! It’s much wider than any one person. It’s a matter of preserving the country’s natural resources—such as factories—and saving the whole of the nation’s industrial plant. We cannot permit the ruin of an establishment as vast as Mr. Boyle’s. The country needs it.”
     “I think,” said Rearden slowly, “that the country needs me much more than it needs Orren Boyle.”
     “But of course!” cried Lawson with startled enthusiasm. “The country needs you, Mr. Rearden! You do realize that, don’t you?”
     But Lawson’s avid pleasure at the familiar formula of self-immolation, vanished abruptly at the sound of Rearden’s voice, a cold, trader’s voice answering: “I do.”
     “It’s not Boyle alone who’s involved,” said Holloway pleadingly. “The country’s economy would not be able to stand a major dislocation at the present moment. There are thousands of Boyle’s workers, suppliers and customers. What would happen to them if Associated Steel went bankrupt?”
     “What will happen to the thousands of my workers, suppliers and customers when I go bankrupt?”
     “You, Mr. Rearden?” said Holloway incredulously. “But you’re the richest, safest and strongest industrialist in the country at this moment!”
     “What about the moment after next?”
     “Uh?”
     “How long do you expect me to be able to produce at a loss?”
     “Oh, Mr. Rearden, I have complete faith in you!”
     “To hell with your faith! How do you expect me to do it?”
     “You’ll manage!”
     “How?”
     There was no answer.

     Of course the looters would not answer. The answer was plain: they hoped to feed on Rearden’s success, that they might remain alive a little longer at his expense. But they would never say so. That would give the game away.

     The game is always the same:

We’ll get what we want at your expense.

     In Rand’s novel, the focus is economic. Money is generally part of the “what we want.” In our place and time, the rest of it – possibly the larger part – is power.

     Whenever you see a blatant asymmetry in treatment between the “elite” and the common folk, it’s imperative to ask “What’s your angle?” If the elitist on the spot declines to answer, or provides an answer that’s plainly irrational, you can take it as written that the large-font sentence above is the truth of the matter. Money, power, celebrity, sex, what have you: he’ll get it at your expense.

***

     That might seem like “previous work:” subject matter whose mastery is prerequisite to any attempt to analyze political machinations. Yet that imperative question isn’t asked nearly often enough to pierce the veils around the agenda of the power elite. We have to change that.

     Just yesterday, the mayor of New York City gave us a case for practice:

     What’s his angle, Gentle Reader? What sort of gain – for himself, his administration, his party, or his ideology – does Adams seek from this proposal? Never mind that typical city-dwellers are compressed more straitly than would permit them to have a “spare room.” Adams has targeted private residences. What does he seek?

     Remember Glenn Beck’s powerful observation: “First they nudge, then they shove, then they shoot.”

     Can you imagine a state of affairs in which this sort of domiciling of illegal aliens – criminals, by the law of the land – in private residences might be made mandatory? Can you imagine such “temporary housing” being proclaimed a right? Can you imagine the imposition being justified as “a matter of national security” or “in the interest of public order?” I can.

     Adams has literally invited the illegals to New York. Perhaps he got more of them than he expected. No matter; he can still make use of them. He can use them to enhance his powers and undermine New Yorkers’ rights under the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

     Adams can’t gain, other than temporarily, from such a move – but his party can, especially its extreme left wing. The attack on private property rights has been in progress for some time. Adams’s measure could be the holing that puts those rights into the grave…especially if it’s taken up and emulated by other blue-city mayors.

***

     The above is merely the most recent outrage that “should” have prompted the question. As far as I know, no one has confronted Adams with any version of it. Reporters wouldn’t even consider it. Can you imagine a mainstream media reporter asking Adams, “What if enough New Yorkers don’t volunteer their ‘spare rooms?’ Would you propose that it be mandatory?” I can’t.

     Politicians lie. (That is “previous work.”) Indeed, they hardly ever do anything else. But forcing them to confront “What’s your angle?” and thereby lie to the public in an obviously indefensible manner, could help to put the skids under them. A few of them, at least.

     Of course, it’s not a complete solution. For that, we need gallows.

Jun 05 2023

Check Check One Two

Well, hello there all you fine folks!

As you can see, Mr. Porretto was struck by some malady that caused him to invite me to post here on his blog. Say a prayer for the poor man, as well as buy one or two of his books so he can afford to heal himself of whatever it is that caused this. As I’m currently blogging on a Goolag-hosted site, I jumped at the chance. I plan on shuttering my Goolag site at the end of the month.

As for who I am, well, I recently retired from the US Army and moved to a patch of woods in northern Idaho. I won’t tell you exactly where, but if you stumble across a sign on a tree that reads “Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again” you’re probably walking through my sector sketch.. I teach motorcycle riding and safety to new riders. Sometimes I even get paid to do that. I cook. I homebrew. I enjoy cigars and whiskey. I drink more coffee than is healthy for an average sized family. I’m married, although we’ll see how long she puts up with me in retirement.

I’ve been kicking around the blog-o-sphere for a couple of decades, and I figure I’ll kick around for a couple more. Of course, that might depend on the Mrs. coming to the conclusion that putting up with me is worth more than the life insurance. Time will tell.

Jun 05 2023

The Trope That Never Expires

     …is racism. Supposedly, American society is so pervaded by racism and the attendant maltreatment of Negroes that their physical health is being degraded:

     Health disparities are the topic under scrutiny in today’s episode of Everything Is RacistTM. According to an investigative series by the Associated Press, black people are the biggest victims of these disparities from birth to death. Black Americans are more likely to have asthma, Alzheimer’s, high mortality rates among pregnant moms and young babies, poor teen mental health, and high blood pressure. And it’s all the fault of the oppressive white institutions, if the AP is to be believed.

     Remarkable. And of course, the AP being a reputable news outlet, we simply must take it on faith that racism is the reason. After all, isn’t racism the reason Sudan hasn’t yet put a man on the Moon? But the possibility that it’s black racism against non-blacks is not considered.

     Yea verily, even black children are afflicted:

     According to the AP, “More than 12% of Black kids nationwide suffer from the disease, compared with 5.5% of white children.” The article grudgingly admits that genetics are against some of these kids. It also conveniently neglects to say what percentage of these children are genetically predisposed to this condition.

     The article blames asthma cases in black children on social/environmental factors. In other words, these kids — just like many whites — live in polluted inner cities and moldy rental houses, and/or suffer from a lack of access to healthcare. The supposed inequity is that blacks are trapped in a poor socioeconomic cycle because “racist” institutions are against them. Racism, in this case, seems to be a filler excuse for not changing circumstances to better the lives of their children.

     Interesting! But ponder for a moment the single biggest cause of death among black teenagers: homicide. Moreover, in the overwhelming majority of those killings, no non-black is involved. So racism is absent from at least one “health disparity”…unless black kids are killing one another out of their racism against themselves. As for the less…terminal effects, how many of them are genetic in origin, as was the terrible plague of alcoholism among American Indians during the colonial era? And how many could be ameliorated by the diversion of family resources to better health care and improved living environments?

     Do I detect a bit of “special pleading” in these articles? Just possibly: the author of the cited articles is the Associated Press’s “national investigative race writer” Kat Stafford:

     Sorry Miss Stafford: your Race Card has been rejected as “credit limit exceeded.” Do you have another?

Jun 05 2023

A Quirky and Thought Provoking Essay

Here.

Jun 05 2023

Disingenuous Or Merely Sarcastic?

     John Hinderaker, one of Web commentary’s brightest lights, penned this:

     For reasons I can’t explain, the Left, including the Democratic Party, has made sex change operations on minors its signature issue. It has become a litmus test: in order to be considered progressive, one must now advocate the mutilation of children’s genitals. If there is a Democratic Party politician who dissents from this orthodoxy, I am not aware of it.

     I contend that there’s little mystery here. The Democrats’ political coalition is beginning to show cracks. Negroes are departing. Immigrants are departing. Even women, long the most reliable Democrat voters, are departing. Therefore, they must look for votes in other places – and what could be more promising than the most underrepresented of all “interest groups:” the the pedophiles and the death cults?

     You’ve already read this morning about the impending war on food. Do you need more convincing that the war is of wider scope than that?

Jun 05 2023

Expect To Miss A Few Meals

     …if this atrocity gains force:

     Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration signed a global agreement with twelve other nations, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, and Spain, to crack down on farming to “save the planet” from “climate change.”

     If it’s like the plan implemented throughout the Western World, it will crush American farmers.

     As the World Bank warns of famines, they plan to restrict farmers over methane gas emissions. The UN and World Economic Forum also warn of famines.

     So we’re going to starve Mankind to… “save the planet?” George Carlin, where are you when we need you?

     Do you think John Kerry expects to go hungry?

     “We can’t get to net zero; we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry, Biden’s climate czar, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington.

     “Food systems themselves contribute a significant amount of emissions just in the way in which we do the things we’ve been doing,” Kerry asserted.

     “With a growing population on the planet – we just crossed the threshold of eight billion fellow citizens around the world – emissions from the food system alone are projected to cause another half a degree of warming by mid-century.”

     How many times must it be said?

Jun 05 2023

Perhaps Things Are Turning Around

     One hopeful sign of a rising consciousness of what’s really going on – the sign that the public’s eyes are turning from the distraction to what the prestidigitator is actually doing – is when “respectable” sources begin to cop to it:

     Christianity Today published a curious piece by Paul Miller on Thursday calling for everyone to forgive each other for our supposed “pandemic sins.”

     He doesn’t exactly say who sinned, just that “We got things wrong,” and “Some officials made mistakes in the early days.” Things happened. Mistakes were made. It’s time to move on. Miller’s argument is basically a warmed-over, lightly Christianized version of the essay Brown University economics professor Emily Oster wrote for The Atlantic last November, which argued for a “pandemic amnesty” on account of how “uncertain” and “complicated” things were in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic like Covid. The ruling class did its best, OK?

     Gee! Where have I heard about this before? Surely some clever bloke has commented on it.

     Actually, as of today, two have done so:

     Yes, this IS exactly how they think—worse, it’s who they are, way down deep inside. They cannot change, and they will not stop. They will never, EVER stop. They will have to BE stopped….

     Yes, they will most certainly do it again, whenever it suits them to. Why on Earth wouldn’t they? This is who they are, it’s what they do. It’s going to be lather, rinse, repeat from here on in, until enough of us figure that out and decide at long last to put a fucking stop to it.

     Indeed. There’s no point in expecting actual contrition from people who feel no guilt. Neither can we expect to be made whole. It’s time for retribution — punishment. There is exactly one source from which that punishment can come – and it isn’t the ballot box.

Jun 05 2023

When Smart People Say Foolish Things

     Folly, the late Barbara Tuchman has told us, is “knowing better but doing worse.” The power of wishful thinking is so great that even demonstrably highly intelligent people can fall into this zone. I say this with a certain authority.

     Today, we have an example from a generally smart commentator:

     The GOP works for us, and it would solve a bunch of the morale problems that its ineptitude has created by understanding the nature of that relationship.

     No, Kurt. That’s not the way it is. That’s the way you want it. As regards the major political parties, Pournelle’s Iron Law kicked in quite some time ago. They’re in business for themselves, and themselves alone. By now, someone as smart as you should have realized that.

     The indispensable Sundance at The Last Refuge addressed this quite recently:

     If you peel the core of any issue involving conflict with the Republican Party, you will find money at the center of it. Current Democrat politicians focus on advancing an ideological agenda; they swing for the fences in an effort to maximize control and power. Current Republican politicians are focused, to the detriment of all other facets, on their personal wealth.

     When you introduce a newly elected ‘conservative‘ to the DC world of republicanism, it is like sending a new guy/gal into the room to talk policy, only to be met with every face around the table staring back quizzically and dismissively while replying, “We don’t do that here – we are talking about money.”

     Once you reset the Schoolhouse Rocks mindset and accept this is the truth of the thing, then everything else that puzzled you about Republican politics reconciles.

     Ballot harvesting doesn’t generate money, so why do it? We can make just as much money in the minority railing against ‘them’, so why be focused on a majority? Donald Trump is threatening the financial position of our benefactors, so we hate him. These are the simple truths of modern Republicans.

     If you want the comparable demonstration for Democrats, just look at what their policies have done to their critical voting blocs. Who do you suppose has benefited from all that carnage, squalor, and despair? Not Negroes. Not recent immigrants, legal or otherwise. And most certainly not American women.

     Once more, with feeling: Politics is not the answer. Politics is the problem. Get off the Mishnory road before it’s too late!

Jun 04 2023

Love And Suffering

     With today, Trinity Sunday, the liturgical year continues into “ordinary time.” That’s a misleading title for this period. It’s intended to mean that we’re beyond the special season of Easter and have not yet entered the special season of Advent. Yet any part of the year in which believers practice the Christian faith is far from routine, mundane, or boring. The faith itself raises it above such mediocrity.

     For me, the mystery of the Divine Trinity is the most inscrutable of the tenets of Christianity. Human reason cannot penetrate it. Viewed in human terms, it’s plainly impossible for three persons simultaneously to be one of something else. And before you ask: no, God is not a committee.

     But there is more than one mystery to the Trinity. The “how,” as baffling as it is, is no more opaque than the “why.” Why “should” the Supreme Being be tripartite? Was it for the reason C. S. Lewis proposed: so that love would find expression in His very nature? That sounds good, certainly…but then we confront this: the mission of the Son to become mortal, then to suffer terribly and die as part of the Divine Plan for our Redemption. Can a Father who is love itself wish suffering upon His Son?

     To say the least, this is not easily answered, if at all.

***

     All any human being can say with confidence about suffering is this:

  • We don’t like it;
  • Sometimes it’s unavoidable.

     The Problem of Pain and the Problem of Evil have been the critical stumbling blocks to the acceptance of Christianity for centuries. The Problem of Evil reduces to one Divine decision: the granting to men of free will in a temporal environment. The Problem of Pain is stiffer, for it involves suffering that might be wholly undeserved by human standards. The only explanation I can imagine is this: No matter how He might have written the laws for our universe, time itself would make suffering possible…and sometimes inevitable.

     But when we contemplate suffering decreed by God the Father to be suffered by His Divine Son, the matter becomes much harder to explain.

***

     I’ll pause here to say it baldly: I don’t have an answer for this aspect of the Trinitarian Mystery. What I know about suffering derives from experience in this temporal universe, where it’s simply something one can’t always avoid. We put a great deal of our effort into the avoidance and minimization of suffering. Yet with all our powers and knowledge, we can’t avert it in every instance. Neither can we always reduce it in magnitude.

     It is our lot as mortal creatures to face certain inevitabilities. One of those is death. “To every man upon this earth, Death cometh soon or late,” said Macaulay’s Horatius, and it is so. And ironic though it may be, it’s those of us who resist that fate most successfully who are likely to suffer worst at the end.

     Shakespeare’s Hamlet pondered whether death might not be “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Some do yearn for it, especially those whose suffering is already great. But to him who faces a period of great[er] suffering as the inescapable antecedent, death will look far less “to be wished.” While it was the possibility of suffering after death that gave the Prince of Denmark pause, most of us must face the suffering of the body first.

     Such a time of excruciating trial was what the Son of God faced as the conclusion to His mission of Redemption.

***

     There’s not much more to be said about Jesus’s Father-decreed Passion of mortality, suffering, and death, except this: in all our world, only He knew with perfect knowledge that His suffering would end and be no more. Yes, in becoming mortal He was required to endure “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” (Damn, that Shakespeare guy could turn a phrase!) He would also undergo the most torturous death that era knew how to inflict. But He knew both the purpose of His suffering and the consequences for Mankind – and He accepted both as His Father’s will.

     On occasion, we will know the reasons for our suffering, however much we dislike the experience. If it seems too difficult to bear, remember that a Son who knew both His Father’s will and His Father’s love bore it with love of His own.

***

     Some essays are harder to write than others. I was just barely able to begin this one. I hope my labors have been to your profit.

     Preach Christ, always. And May God bless and keep you all.

Jun 03 2023

The Low-Trust Society: A Case Study

     I snagged the graphic below from Ace of Spades HQ. The story it tells, though four and a half years old, is an important one. It’s easy merely to allow yourself to be appalled and then pass on to other things. In today’s sociopolitical environment, that’s no longer wise. Anyone could be caught in the toils of something greatly similar.

     Please read the story in its entirety. You may have to download the graphic and magnify it for ease of reading. Then return here and follow along with me as I unpack it, step by step, and invite my Gentle Readers to confront the questions it raises.

***

     First, the behavior of the would-be baby-snatcher. According to the narrator she was “brimming with nonchalant confidence.” Yet she was about to commit a heinous crime which was once punishable by death and is still regarded as worthy of life imprisonment. That’s a penalty that would deter the overwhelming majority of us.

     Why was she so confident? Was it a veneer and nothing more? Stipulate that it wasn’t; what would have given her such a degree of confidence that there would be no penalty for her theft – indeed, that she would get away with it cleanly?

     Note here that the baby’s immediate guardian was a man and the baby-snatcher was a woman. This will also factor into subsequent developments.

***

     Second, the father’s stunned incredulity at the baby-snatcher’s brass. If the narrator’s description of his reaction is accurate, he could not accept that the snatch was really happening for a vital few seconds. He sat stunned long enough for her to get baby and carrier some distance away, which might have played into the reaction of the bystanders.

     Why was Dad so utterly stunned? Did he still believe, perhaps subconsciously, in the high-trust / low-crime civilization of seven decades ago? If not, would he have reacted differently or more promptly?

     This goes to the degree of situational awareness prevalent among law-abiding Americans.

***

     Third, the baby-snatcher’s defensive tactic upon the father’s (eventual) reaction. It was apparently immediate to the point of being reflexive. There are only two possible explanations:

  1. She was completely insane and truly believed the child was hers;
  2. She’d planned it in advance, as with the snatch itself.

     Explanation #1 doesn’t hold water. Her actions throughout were too calm and too calculated to make it plausible. Might she have counted on her sex to give her a tactical edge big enough to get away with the baby?

     If I’m correct, this indicates that the story is unlikely to be unique…or, if it is, to remain unique.

***

     Fourth, the reactions of the bystanders who intervened in the baby-snatcher’s favor. Given the bare bones of the situation and a typically unobservant crowd in the parking lot, perhaps their conclusion was defensible: i.e., that it was the man, not the woman, who was the criminal. That would be consistent with prevailing attitudes toward men in public places when children are nearby.

     This question isn’t asked nearly often enough: Have Americans become prejudiced against men and fatherhood? The family courts certainly are. Prompt reactions such as the one the father suffered in the story above testify in support.

     Consider the implications with regard to American men’s willingness to marry and become fathers.

***

     Fifth, the immediate reactions of the police on the scene. Their attitude was defensive of the actions and intentions of the baby-snatcher…who, by that time, had escaped completely, unimpeded by anyone. I find the police’s behavior the least comprehensible thing about the tale. Certainly it’s the least praiseworthy. Perhaps that’s my lingering desire to believe that most police are good people sincerely dedicated to “protecting and serving” the public.

     It’s widely observed today that police are reluctant to intervene in a violent incident, regardless of its nature. Yet in the aftermath, with father and mother both present and testifying, what accounts for their protracted attempt to exonerate the baby-snatcher? Surely by then the facts of the matter were clear. Were they worried about lawsuits? Interrogation by higher-ups? Perhaps an unfriendly inquiry from a political source?

     In any such situation, there’s a possibility that the police on the scene will make a mistake. They’re human, after all. But their fear of the possible consequences “should” not keep them from acting according to the law and the observable circumstances.

***

     All the above relies, of course, on the narrative in the graphic being an accurate one. If there are any among my Gentle Readers who know differently and can substantiate their claim, please step forward.

     While it is true that father and mother retained their baby, it’s insufficient to say that “all’s well that ends well.” That is not the case…or perhaps I should say that it “shouldn’t” be. But then, we “shouldn’t” have squandered the high-trust society that would once have made all the events above unthinkable from the very first.

     I urge you, Gentle Reader, to pass this one around. If I may once again use that dispreferred word, it “should” be widely known. It would have great impact if it were.

Jun 02 2023

Sociopolitical Impossibilities

     Many years ago, a wise man named Rev. William J. H. Boetcker wrote these lines:

You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

     I’m sure you’ve seen them before, or at least items selected from them. The good sense they express is so clear – and so irrefutable – that I can’t imagine anyone daring to differ with them. Yet the courses they deplore – i.e., the “cannots” – are in operation throughout this nation as we speak.

     How did this come to pass? Mostly through the operation of envy, greed, and their principal offspring, hatred.

     Hatred is an emotion our nature equips us to feel. Therefore it must have some function; there must be some condition or aspect of existence that is properly addressed by hating it. Yet Christ Himself has told us that other people are not proper targets for hatred:

     Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. [Matthew 5:43-45]

     To hate is to wish harm upon the hated person or thing. It “should” be “obvious” that one man cannot reconcile himself with another if there is hatred between them. If peace exists between them, it’s superficial and cosmetic: the peace of the “demilitarized zone.” Should either side discover that it has achieved a significant advantage over the other, hostilities will commence at once.

     A society riven by hatred cannot achieve an enduring state of peace and social harmony.

***

     This is on my mind today because of a premonition. The torrent of hatreds that the Left, in its various expressions, has aimed at the Right are having an effect that was predictable from the start: normal, decent Americans have realized that the Left means to do us and our country great harm. Though the hatred comes in several sub-varieties:

  • The deluded hate the sane;
  • The childless hate the parents;
  • The atheists hate the believers;
  • The Negroes hate the Caucasians;
  • The urbanites hate the non-urbanites;
  • Sexual deviants hate the sexually normal;
  • The welfare recipients hate the self-sufficient;
  • Those of non-European heritage hate those of European heritage;

     …it has the same import – and the same impact — in all cases: there’s a wish to harm, even destroy involved. Some of it has been actualized: e.g., the race riots of the previous four years. Some of it simmers just below the threshold of open violence.

     That hatred immovably blocks the possibility of social harmony.

     Is any of the hatred remediable? We can’t know that before it’s been remedied. However, the history of Western man suggests that the best remedy for hatred is the overwhelming defeat of those who hate. Consciousness of this is rising among normal Americans.

     My premonition is that within a year or two, the mushrooming reaction of normal Americans against those who hate us will eventuate in the defeat of the Left. But if it’s a purely political victory – i.e., achieved through the ballot box – it will leave the hatreds in place. Indeed, it might make them more absolute and virulent than ever.

     If that should prove to be the case, there will be no sincere reconciliation, only a cosmetic peace.

***

     The old “diplomat’s definition” of peace is “A state of tension that falls short of open armed conflict.” It’s the best state achievable between parties that hate one another. While the hatred persists, nothing better is possible. This is a fundamental reality that cannot be wished away.

     But we may expect those on the Left, after their defeat, to call for “healing,” “forgiveness,” and perhaps even “brotherhood.” In other words, “Please forget that we hate you and intend to destroy you as soon as the odds favor us.”

     There have already been some indications that such appeals will arise. Remember this column? That was a straw tossed to the wind. If the totalitarians of the COVID-19 “pandemic” could induce us to let them off the hook for their campaign against individual freedom, then surely anything would be possible. The Left’s calls for “healing,” “forgiveness,” and “brotherhood” could lull us back into placidity and inattention. They could plan further strikes safe from retribution.

     Do not be lulled. Remember their hatreds, for they will still be alive and in effect. Remember their many efforts to cultivate and intensify them. Until they have been expunged – and we cannot know whether it’s even possible – there can be no true peace. Certainly there can be no “brotherhood.”

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